Welcome to our classroom blog! Our blog is like a journal, a never ending account and record of all the exciting adventures we experience in Kindergarten. We are an enthusiastic group of people who care about each other and the world. We hope you enjoy reading, listening and watching what we do!

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

We have begun a new writing study! We are reading, listening and writing poetry. Miss Post shared a few of her favorite poems with us and then we had an opportunity to look and read other poems. The SMARTboard was great because we were able to highlight words that rhymed! Lots of fun!

We have ended our study of birds, but hope that you will continue to look for sightings of birds where ever you go! Today your child will be bringing home their Bird Habitats! Each child will also have their own pair of binoculars as well to use when bird watching. Have Fun!

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Today we each created our very own bird square! Each square is a bird in it's habitat. Then a small group of children discovered how to make rows and columns of squares to make a quilt! Wow! Great math thinking happening in Kindergarten.

Friday, March 12, 2010

This afternoon we worked VERY hard on a math problem solver about baby chicks. A mother chicken laid 8 eggs and we had to discover how many eyes were looking at the mother after they hatched. Wow! We shared different counting strategies and discovered that counting by 2's was the quickest way to help us find our solution. The children are amazing and are so confident sharing their math strategies. The SMARTboard is a great tool that helps the children interact with their mathematical ideas. ****Remember you can click on any photo and it will enlarge! This way you can get a closer look at what we do when we solve problems in Kindergarten.******

This morning during Reader's Workshop some of the children were reading with their tag pens and headphones, but I noticed that they were reading the words out loud by themselves with no audio. Wow! What a wonderful transformation!

Thursday, March 11, 2010

The children created their own bird using a program called, PAINT. The program has lots of different drawing tools so the children could change the lines, shapes and colors as they created their bird. We are also working on creating an Animationish of a bird! We will share this with you soon. You can also go to the Animationish website by clicking on Animationish under the Favorite Links section on our classroom blog.

This afternoon we worked in many different math stations. The stations are set up for us to work independently in while working with a math concept. Be sure to ask your child what they worked with today!

The children created a brainstorming map about birds today. We brainstormed special features and characteristics that all birds have. The children then started creating picture frames of their ideas. Wonderful writing!

Thursday, March 4, 2010

This morning the children worked in partnerships and talked about the special features and characteristics that birds have. Afterwards the children were given a bird to examine and then talk about the features and characteristics that they noticed about their bird. Next the children worked in a writing partnership and wrote down the characteristics that all birds have. Wow! Lots of fun and some great writing!

This morning the children counted 200 books that our classroom collected to support Read Across America! The books we collected will be donated to local organizations to help provide more books in homes for children.

We collected over 200 books! The children sorted the books into groups of 5! We counted by 5's to come up with our total. Great example of how oral counting can be used to solve a group problem!

Ms. Lauren worked with a small group of children this morning and wrote a piece of writing about our efforts for the Blue and Gold Newspaper. Great Job Everyone!

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

What fun we had this afternoon. We are practicing counting orally as well as creating single and double digit numbers. Each child has a counting rope with 100 beads on it. Each group of 10 is one color. The children count out loud as well as to themselves. I asked the children to show/represent a specific number on their counting rope. Great activity. We now have another mathematical tool that we can use to count with!